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fredbassettTitle : The Dawn of a New Day
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Becker/Ethan, Ryan, Danny, Lester, Matt, Connor, Abby
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : Ethan and Danny take their first, tentative steps towards reconciliation.
A/N : Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jaynedoll’s birthday. I hope you have a lovely day! Four years ago she wanted some Becker/Ethan hurt/comfort, with Becker doing the comforting. This is a continuation of what has now become a birthday series and follows The Dark Before the Dawn, Out of Darkness Into Day, The Shadows of Morning and Evening Comes.
“You’re sure of this, Major?” Lester demanded, glaring at Ryan over the top of the report he’d been reading.
Ryan nodded. “Burton set Dobrowski up. One of his men has confessed to killing Andrews.”
“And the bomb?” Becker asked, relieved to hear Ethan had been exonerated of the murder.
“Another set up. Dobrowski made a convenient scapegoat all round.”
“The fucking bastard!” Danny looked furious and Becker didn’t blame him.
Burton had covered his tracks well, and Ethan – or should that be Patrick now? – had not furthered his own cause by refusing to refute the accusations made against him. During the time Becker had spent with the man, stuck in the snowy wilderness of a seemingly deserted city, it had become increasingly hard to see his taciturn companion in the light he’d been originally portrayed, but despite Ethan’s protestation that he was not a murderer, he’d stubbornly refused to elaborate on his own defence. The man was hard bugger, there was no doubt about that, but Becker had always prided himself on his ability to see beneath the surface, and what he’d seen had been at odds with the picture of Ethan as a callous murderer.
“Will the confession hold up in court?” Danny demanded.
Lester waved an elegant hand dismissively. “It won’t have to. There’s no way the government can afford to make any of this official. Burton is off the anomaly project. New Dawn has been shut down. That’s as far as it’ll go.”
Danny opened his mouth to protest but was silenced by Ryan’s steadying hand on his shoulder. “It’s over, Quinn. Rebuild your relationship with Patrick. Let Lester deal with the politics. Your job is to help Matt head up this project. The anomalies aren’t going to sit around and wait while you get your shit together, so you’d better be quick about it.”
Danny rolled his eyes. “Your motivational speaking sucks frogs, mate.”
“So I’ve been told. Now bugger off, the pair of you.” The major nodded pointedly at the door.
“Looks like the next bit’s above our pay-grade, soldier boy,” Danny said, his craggy face creasing into a grin. “Come on, we know when we’re not wanted.”
Becker stood his ground for a moment and looked enquiringly at Lester. “So what happens to Dobrowski now, sir?”
“Still here, Captain?” Lester feigned surprise. “I thought you had a waif and stray to rehabilitate?”
Resisting the impulse to play Lester at his own game and roll his eyes, Becker followed Danny out of the door. It seemed he’d had all the answer he was going to get. They made their way to the break room and equipped themselves with coffee before retiring to the armoury where they could talk in privacy.
“How’s he doing, Becks?” Danny asked, sprawling out on one of the benches.
Becker shrugged. “He doesn’t exactly do much talking, but I think physically, he’s improving.” He decided it was probably better not to mention Ethan’s nocturnal panic attacks when he’d wake up jabbering in Russian, eyes wide and unseeing. Becker’s grasp of the language wasn’t good enough to understand what the man was saying, but the look on Ethan’s face told him pretty much all he needed to know. When it happened, he was clearly reliving what he’d gone through at the hands of Burton and his men and the memories weren’t good ones.
“Does he still blame me for abandoning him?”
That was something else Becker couldn’t answer. Ethan had refused to talk to his brother and Becker hadn’t wanted to risk their fragile truce by pushing him. “Give him time, mate,” he said, knowing how lame his words sounded and how desperate Danny was to have his younger brother back. But the Ethan Dobrowski that Becker knew was a far cry from the teenager that his brother remembered.
“I’ll give him as much time as he needs,” Danny said quietly.
“I’m getting him out here,” Becker decided, draining his coffee mug and standing up. “Lester didn’t say anything about keeping him cooped up any longer.”
“He didn’t say you could take him home, either,” Danny pointed out.
“He didn’t say I couldn’t.” Becker countered.
“What if there’s a shout?”
“Then I’ll meet you on site. Call me if anything happens.”
On his way back to the company flat, Becker collected enough painkillers and antibiotics from the medical bay to see Ethan through the next few days. He was relieved to get nothing more than a mildly quizzical look from Ditzy when he announced his intention of taking Ethan home with him.
In the company flat they’d been occupying for the last few days, Ethan was sprawled out on the sofa, eyes closed, wearing a loose pair of jogging bottoms and a grey teeshirt that had ridden up to display a pale stripe of skin bisected by a trail of dark hair running across the taut skin of his stomach to disappear into the waistband of his pants.
“Pack a bag,” Becker announced. “We’re going back to my flat.”
“What’ll your boss have to say about that, princess?” Ethan commented.
Becker threw a kit bag at him. “The major’s convinced Lester you aren’t the villain of the piece. You could have made things easier by just telling us what the fuck happened.”
Ethan sat up, tugging his teeshirt down. “And you’d all have believed me? Better to let them draw their own conclusions.”
Avoiding Becker’s eyes, Ethan sauntered through to the bedroom and threw his few possessions into the bag. When Becker tossed the packets of tablets onto the bed, Ethan added them to one of the pockets without comment. Saying thank you didn’t appear to be part of his vocabulary, but Becker could live with that. He was coming to the conclusion that dealing with Ethan was a bit like handling a feral dog. Get too close and he would only back off, snarling.
They made their way down into the internal car park and chucked their stuff in the back of Becker’s truck. Ethan said nothing on the journey to Becker’s flat, but his dark eyes were taking in their surroundings. The flat itself was nothing special, just the top half of a converted 1930s house in a quiet, tree-lined street. His truck looked as out of place amongst the plethora of Smarts, Minis, Peugeots and other assorted townie cars as he felt when he was talking to his neighbours, all of whom seem to have the regulation 2.4 children and a sodding Labradoodle, or something similar. Speaking of which, he thought he’d done a remarkably good job of keeping a straight face when the yummy-mummy next door had announced that the small black bundle of fur that was dragging her four-year-old down the street was a Cockapoo. The name had given the lads a bloody good laugh the following day.
“There’s beer in the fridge,” Becker said, throwing his kit bag into his bedroom. He wondered if he should offer to make up the sofa bed, but as they’d been sharing a bed for the past week, the gesture would have seemed unnecessarily coy. “Stick what you want in the washing machine and I’ll put a load through, then we can phone for a takeaway. The menus are up on the fridge.”
Ethan thrust his hands in his pockets and looked mutinous. “I can’t exactly pay you back, princess.”
Becker grinned. “Don’t worry, it’s all going on expenses. I reckon you’re owed that much for what Burton and his goons did.”
A dark look settled on Ethan’s face and Becker kicked himself for his tactlessness. Deciding that it was probably a case of least said, soonest mended, he simply busied himself grabbing his dirty washing and stuffing it in the machine and, after a few minutes, the other man followed suit.
Much as he wanted a beer himself, Becker stuck to Coke. It would be just his luck to get a call-out while he was still on shift and Matt would take a dim view of having to send someone to fetch him if something did kick off.
When at 8pm, he got a text from Danny that said: I’ll cover your shift tonight, kiddo. You owe me one Becker thankfully popped the top off a bottle of Tiger beer to go with the Chinese that had just been delivered. They ate in front of the TV, mostly in silence and, two hours later, it was clear that the pair of them were heading for an early night. Becker tidied away the cartons, washed the plates and headed for bed. Ethan hesitated for a moment, then followed him.
After the first night they’d spent together in the ARC, they’d continued to sleep naked, as getting dressed to go to bed was never something Becker had felt the need to do unless he was sharing a bunkroom with the lads. Out of habit, he laid a clean set of clothes out on the bedroom chair in case he got called out in the middle of the night. Ethan did the same, making sure he knew where everything was before he turned the light out.
The bedroom faced the back of another row of identical houses, but enough light came in through the window for Becker to see the thoughtful look in Ethan’s dark eyes. Becker was tempted to ask what was on the man’s mind, but experience told him that personal questions never went down too well, so instead, he just settled down to sleep, and in a few minutes, Ethan did the same.
For the first time in a week, no nightmares disturbed their sleep, and by the time Becker’s alarm went off, they’d both had a solid eight hours rest. He’d been vaguely conscious of having cuddled up to his bedmate during the night but by the time the alarm went off, they were each on their own side of the bed.
Becker threw the duvet back and padded unselfconsciously into the bathroom for a piss and a quick shower. As he was towelling himself off, he heard his phone ring. The tone was the one reserved for a call-out.
As he hurried back into the bedroom, Ethan held the phone out to him.
“Yeah?” Becker said, accepting the call.
“Get your arse out of bed, solider boy,” Danny told him. “Jess is sending you the map reference now.”
“What have we got?”
“Something like a Kimodo dragon on steroids. Your kit’s in the van. See you there.”
Why the hell was it never something small and fluffy? Becker cut the call and started pulling on his clothes. On the other side of the bed, Ethan was doing the same.
“I’ll earn my keep,” Ethan told him, sporting a mutinous look that wouldn’t have been out of place on a 14-year-old.
“Suit yourself.”
They were out of the door at a run five minutes after Becker had taken the call. By dint of some highly illegal speeds, they arrived at their destination – an up-market housing estate on the edge of a wood – no more than 10 minutes after Matt, Danny and the rest of the ARC response teams had reached the site. The anomaly was ten metres into the wood, and Connor was already setting up the locking device.
Matt had glanced at Ethan as he’d followed a pace behind Becker and had done nothing more than nod. Danny’s face had looked suspiciously like a kicked puppy when Ethan had studiously avoided his eyes. Becker made a mental note to bang their heads together in the not too distant future if the pair of them didn’t start talking soon, but that would have to wait until the current threat had been contained.
“What have we got?”
Matt handed him a mobile phone. “A dog-walker shot this an hour ago.”
Becker watched 30 seconds of jerky video feed showing something that looked like a giant version of one of Abby’s pet lizards scuttling away into the bushes. He grimaced. It reminded him of the therocepalians they’d encountered at the school, but was considerably heavier, with a more massive head and strong, crushing jaws set in a broad, blunt snout.
“Have we got an ID yet?”
“Connor thinks it might be something called a Moschorinus. It’s a tough bugger. One of the few things that survived the end Permian extinction.”
“Shoot to kill?” Becker said hopefully, slinging his Mossberg over his shoulder and taking the EMD rifle one of his men handed to him.
“Only as an absolute last resort,” Matt told him. “The EMDs should be enough.”
“I’ve seen those things before,” Ethan commented, ignoring Matt and talking direct to Becker. “They’re fast, they’re nasty, and they hunt in packs. You won’t find one on its own. And your toy guns won’t last long against them. They’d got a hide like iron.”
“Anything else you can tell us?”
“Yes. Stay away from their jaws. The group I travelled with lost four people to a pack of these things and then another three to blood poisoning. One of them got no more than a scratch, but it was enough.”
Matt nodded, and quickly relayed the information to the search teams. The ground had been cleared of walkers, but holding a perimeter around an area the size of the woodland wasn’t going to be easy. Jess had drafted in the local police to keep bystanders at bay, but there will still too many people in close proximity to the woodland for Becker’s liking.
By unspoken agreement, Ethan stayed close to Becker, and Danny went with Matt. The two brothers were giving each other a wide berth like two dogs circling stiff-legged, hackles up, but to his credit, Danny was clearly doing his best not to push things, seemingly content that Ethan – Patrick – hadn’t just disappeared off through the nearest anomaly.
Thanks to Ethan’s sharp eyes and quick reflexes, Becker was able to bring of one the creatures down in the first five minutes of the search. The beast came at them out of the undergrowth, growling like a bear. A blast of Becker’s EMD took it squarely in the chest. For a moment he thought the charge hadn’t been high enough, but then it had crumpled to the ground and lain there, twitching. Abby’s animal-handling crew moved in quickly with nets and ropes, and she pumped it full of enough tranquillisers to stop a charging hippopotamus.
One down, an indeterminate number left to go.
Dong their best to hold to a grid search pattern, the teams swept through the woods, heading towards a small lake roughly in the centre. It was a hot day and according to Ethan, the creatures were likely to be attracted to water. The second one they encountered was quickly taken down by Matt’s team, although as Ethan had predicted, the EMDs were starting to show signs of strain. The still-twitching creatures were providing plenty of work for Abby, and another two had been sighted moving further into the woodland. Becker’s only consolation was that they were too big to be easily overlooked. Providing they kept looking, they should get the buggers in the end.
By the time the lake came into view, Becker was sweating freely and cursing the number of biting insects in the air.
“Sweet blood, princess,” Ethan muttered, looking amused.
“Fuck off.” As the words left Becker’s mouth, Ethan lunged at him, knocking him sideways, just as one of the giant therocephalians came out of a dense patch of undergrowth, moving fast, head down and jaws agape. Its mouth snapped shut, narrowly missing Becker’s leg. He rolled, bringing up his EMD to fire, but the creature had moved off, skirting the edge of the water, heading in the direction of Matt’s group. Ethan’s quick reactions had very probably saved Becker’s life, but there would be time for thanks later.
“Matt! Danny! There’s one coming your way!” he yelled into his radio.
A yell from the other side of the lake told Becker the other group had trouble of their own. He scrambled to his feet and set off at a run, closely followed by Ethan and the other members of his search team. As he ran, Becker pulled his smaller EMD from its holster on his thigh and tossed it to Ethan. Going up against these things armed was bad enough, but unarmed was just fucking stupid. Ethan had just stopped one of the bastard things sinking its teeth in him. The least he could do was to give him the ability to defend himself.
Around them, the undergrowth suddenly exploded in a grey-green mass of heavy-bodied predators. Ethan was right, they’d been attracted to the water. Becker raised the EMD to his shoulder and pulled the trigger. The electro muscular disruptor did its work on one of their attackers but the strength of charge need to take the heavily-set creatures down was draining the battery pack with frightening rapidity. In the close-quarter fighting that followed, time slowed to a crawl, as it so often did in action.
Becker saw one of the Moschorinus grab one of his men by the leg and start to drag him towards the water but he had problems of his own, as did nearly everyone else, while what seemed like an entire pack of the bastard things erupted from the undergrowth around the lake. He managed to bring one down, but his EMD was already starting to run dangerously low on charge. He might manage one more decent shot at a push, but after that the Mossberg would have to come out to play. A shotgun blast close at hand told him he wasn’t the only one in the same predicament.
One of Matt’s team was down, how badly hurt Becker couldn’t tell, but it didn’t look good. Danny ran to the man’s aid, swinging his EMD like a club, clearly out of charge. The Moschorinus turned on him with a roar, jaws agape as another closed on him from behind. Becker used up his final charge on that one as Ethan flung himself forwards, jamming the muzzle of the EMD pistol against the hide of the other creature’s neck. It jerked but didn’t fall. With a curse in a language Becker didn’t recognise, Ethan pulled back the weapon and thrust it into the predator’s mouth, still holding down the trigger.
As Becker dropped his now useless rifle and pumped a shell into the breach of his shotgun, Ethan grabbed a Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife from the sheath on the fallen man’s thigh and buried it to the hilt first in the enraged predator’s eye-socket and then in its neck, buying Danny the time to roll away, out of reach of its jaws as it tottered for a moment and started to crumple to the ground. A blast from Becker’s Mossberg at point blank range put it out of its misery.
As quickly as it had started, the action was over. Two of the creatures were dead, three more insensible. How many of his men were injured, Becker couldn’t yet tell, but at least two were down.
“Jess, we have casualties!” he yelled into his radio mic. “We need a medevac now!”
“There’s a helicopter on its way,” she told him calmly. “ETA five minutes.”
As Becker cast his eyes around the lakeside, wondering if the smell of blood would attract any more of the creatures, he saw Danny come to his knees, breathing hard. He’d been seconds away from a formidable pair of jaws grabbing hold of him when his brother had intervening, no doubt saving his life.
Ethan stared down at his brother, his face utterly inscrutable, the bloody knife still held in his right hand. Without speaking, he held out his other hand. Danny clasped it and allowed Ethan to haul him to his feet. The two brothers hesitated for a moment, and then Danny pulled Ethan into an awkward hug. For a moment, Becker thought Ethan was going to pull away, but he didn’t. He rested his head on Danny’s shoulder, eyes closed as his brother held him.
Becker turned away to allow the two men a brief moment of privacy amongst the carnage. “Keep searching,” he ordered. “We can’t afford to miss one of these buggers.”
By the time his men finished their sweep of the woods, the injured had been stabilised as far as possible and airlifted to hospital. The medics were cautiously optimistic, which was more than Becker had expected after seeing the injuries the predators had inflicted.
Abby’s retrieval teams managed to get the tranquilised Moschorinus back through the anomaly, followed by the corpses. There was going to be plenty of meat available when the others came round, which they were already starting to do just before Connor locked the anomaly again. Ethan worked beside Danny and Becker to help haul the huge beasts back to their own time.
By the time they left the woodland, the brothers had established a tentative rapport. In Becker’s experience, the imminent fear of death was a better way of breaking down barriers than any amount of therapy. Ethan had seen his brother in trouble and had gone to his aid with no thought for his own safety, and in doing so he had done more than just save Danny’s life, he’d started the process of building a new one for himself.
Maybe it was time to start thinking of him as Patrick Quinn, instead of Ethan Dobrowski.
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Becker/Ethan, Ryan, Danny, Lester, Matt, Connor, Abby
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : Ethan and Danny take their first, tentative steps towards reconciliation.
A/N : Written for
jaynedoll’s birthday. I hope you have a lovely day! Four years ago she wanted some Becker/Ethan hurt/comfort, with Becker doing the comforting. This is a continuation of what has now become a birthday series and follows The Dark Before the Dawn, Out of Darkness Into Day, The Shadows of Morning and Evening Comes.“You’re sure of this, Major?” Lester demanded, glaring at Ryan over the top of the report he’d been reading.
Ryan nodded. “Burton set Dobrowski up. One of his men has confessed to killing Andrews.”
“And the bomb?” Becker asked, relieved to hear Ethan had been exonerated of the murder.
“Another set up. Dobrowski made a convenient scapegoat all round.”
“The fucking bastard!” Danny looked furious and Becker didn’t blame him.
Burton had covered his tracks well, and Ethan – or should that be Patrick now? – had not furthered his own cause by refusing to refute the accusations made against him. During the time Becker had spent with the man, stuck in the snowy wilderness of a seemingly deserted city, it had become increasingly hard to see his taciturn companion in the light he’d been originally portrayed, but despite Ethan’s protestation that he was not a murderer, he’d stubbornly refused to elaborate on his own defence. The man was hard bugger, there was no doubt about that, but Becker had always prided himself on his ability to see beneath the surface, and what he’d seen had been at odds with the picture of Ethan as a callous murderer.
“Will the confession hold up in court?” Danny demanded.
Lester waved an elegant hand dismissively. “It won’t have to. There’s no way the government can afford to make any of this official. Burton is off the anomaly project. New Dawn has been shut down. That’s as far as it’ll go.”
Danny opened his mouth to protest but was silenced by Ryan’s steadying hand on his shoulder. “It’s over, Quinn. Rebuild your relationship with Patrick. Let Lester deal with the politics. Your job is to help Matt head up this project. The anomalies aren’t going to sit around and wait while you get your shit together, so you’d better be quick about it.”
Danny rolled his eyes. “Your motivational speaking sucks frogs, mate.”
“So I’ve been told. Now bugger off, the pair of you.” The major nodded pointedly at the door.
“Looks like the next bit’s above our pay-grade, soldier boy,” Danny said, his craggy face creasing into a grin. “Come on, we know when we’re not wanted.”
Becker stood his ground for a moment and looked enquiringly at Lester. “So what happens to Dobrowski now, sir?”
“Still here, Captain?” Lester feigned surprise. “I thought you had a waif and stray to rehabilitate?”
Resisting the impulse to play Lester at his own game and roll his eyes, Becker followed Danny out of the door. It seemed he’d had all the answer he was going to get. They made their way to the break room and equipped themselves with coffee before retiring to the armoury where they could talk in privacy.
“How’s he doing, Becks?” Danny asked, sprawling out on one of the benches.
Becker shrugged. “He doesn’t exactly do much talking, but I think physically, he’s improving.” He decided it was probably better not to mention Ethan’s nocturnal panic attacks when he’d wake up jabbering in Russian, eyes wide and unseeing. Becker’s grasp of the language wasn’t good enough to understand what the man was saying, but the look on Ethan’s face told him pretty much all he needed to know. When it happened, he was clearly reliving what he’d gone through at the hands of Burton and his men and the memories weren’t good ones.
“Does he still blame me for abandoning him?”
That was something else Becker couldn’t answer. Ethan had refused to talk to his brother and Becker hadn’t wanted to risk their fragile truce by pushing him. “Give him time, mate,” he said, knowing how lame his words sounded and how desperate Danny was to have his younger brother back. But the Ethan Dobrowski that Becker knew was a far cry from the teenager that his brother remembered.
“I’ll give him as much time as he needs,” Danny said quietly.
“I’m getting him out here,” Becker decided, draining his coffee mug and standing up. “Lester didn’t say anything about keeping him cooped up any longer.”
“He didn’t say you could take him home, either,” Danny pointed out.
“He didn’t say I couldn’t.” Becker countered.
“What if there’s a shout?”
“Then I’ll meet you on site. Call me if anything happens.”
On his way back to the company flat, Becker collected enough painkillers and antibiotics from the medical bay to see Ethan through the next few days. He was relieved to get nothing more than a mildly quizzical look from Ditzy when he announced his intention of taking Ethan home with him.
In the company flat they’d been occupying for the last few days, Ethan was sprawled out on the sofa, eyes closed, wearing a loose pair of jogging bottoms and a grey teeshirt that had ridden up to display a pale stripe of skin bisected by a trail of dark hair running across the taut skin of his stomach to disappear into the waistband of his pants.
“Pack a bag,” Becker announced. “We’re going back to my flat.”
“What’ll your boss have to say about that, princess?” Ethan commented.
Becker threw a kit bag at him. “The major’s convinced Lester you aren’t the villain of the piece. You could have made things easier by just telling us what the fuck happened.”
Ethan sat up, tugging his teeshirt down. “And you’d all have believed me? Better to let them draw their own conclusions.”
Avoiding Becker’s eyes, Ethan sauntered through to the bedroom and threw his few possessions into the bag. When Becker tossed the packets of tablets onto the bed, Ethan added them to one of the pockets without comment. Saying thank you didn’t appear to be part of his vocabulary, but Becker could live with that. He was coming to the conclusion that dealing with Ethan was a bit like handling a feral dog. Get too close and he would only back off, snarling.
They made their way down into the internal car park and chucked their stuff in the back of Becker’s truck. Ethan said nothing on the journey to Becker’s flat, but his dark eyes were taking in their surroundings. The flat itself was nothing special, just the top half of a converted 1930s house in a quiet, tree-lined street. His truck looked as out of place amongst the plethora of Smarts, Minis, Peugeots and other assorted townie cars as he felt when he was talking to his neighbours, all of whom seem to have the regulation 2.4 children and a sodding Labradoodle, or something similar. Speaking of which, he thought he’d done a remarkably good job of keeping a straight face when the yummy-mummy next door had announced that the small black bundle of fur that was dragging her four-year-old down the street was a Cockapoo. The name had given the lads a bloody good laugh the following day.
“There’s beer in the fridge,” Becker said, throwing his kit bag into his bedroom. He wondered if he should offer to make up the sofa bed, but as they’d been sharing a bed for the past week, the gesture would have seemed unnecessarily coy. “Stick what you want in the washing machine and I’ll put a load through, then we can phone for a takeaway. The menus are up on the fridge.”
Ethan thrust his hands in his pockets and looked mutinous. “I can’t exactly pay you back, princess.”
Becker grinned. “Don’t worry, it’s all going on expenses. I reckon you’re owed that much for what Burton and his goons did.”
A dark look settled on Ethan’s face and Becker kicked himself for his tactlessness. Deciding that it was probably a case of least said, soonest mended, he simply busied himself grabbing his dirty washing and stuffing it in the machine and, after a few minutes, the other man followed suit.
Much as he wanted a beer himself, Becker stuck to Coke. It would be just his luck to get a call-out while he was still on shift and Matt would take a dim view of having to send someone to fetch him if something did kick off.
When at 8pm, he got a text from Danny that said: I’ll cover your shift tonight, kiddo. You owe me one Becker thankfully popped the top off a bottle of Tiger beer to go with the Chinese that had just been delivered. They ate in front of the TV, mostly in silence and, two hours later, it was clear that the pair of them were heading for an early night. Becker tidied away the cartons, washed the plates and headed for bed. Ethan hesitated for a moment, then followed him.
After the first night they’d spent together in the ARC, they’d continued to sleep naked, as getting dressed to go to bed was never something Becker had felt the need to do unless he was sharing a bunkroom with the lads. Out of habit, he laid a clean set of clothes out on the bedroom chair in case he got called out in the middle of the night. Ethan did the same, making sure he knew where everything was before he turned the light out.
The bedroom faced the back of another row of identical houses, but enough light came in through the window for Becker to see the thoughtful look in Ethan’s dark eyes. Becker was tempted to ask what was on the man’s mind, but experience told him that personal questions never went down too well, so instead, he just settled down to sleep, and in a few minutes, Ethan did the same.
For the first time in a week, no nightmares disturbed their sleep, and by the time Becker’s alarm went off, they’d both had a solid eight hours rest. He’d been vaguely conscious of having cuddled up to his bedmate during the night but by the time the alarm went off, they were each on their own side of the bed.
Becker threw the duvet back and padded unselfconsciously into the bathroom for a piss and a quick shower. As he was towelling himself off, he heard his phone ring. The tone was the one reserved for a call-out.
As he hurried back into the bedroom, Ethan held the phone out to him.
“Yeah?” Becker said, accepting the call.
“Get your arse out of bed, solider boy,” Danny told him. “Jess is sending you the map reference now.”
“What have we got?”
“Something like a Kimodo dragon on steroids. Your kit’s in the van. See you there.”
Why the hell was it never something small and fluffy? Becker cut the call and started pulling on his clothes. On the other side of the bed, Ethan was doing the same.
“I’ll earn my keep,” Ethan told him, sporting a mutinous look that wouldn’t have been out of place on a 14-year-old.
“Suit yourself.”
They were out of the door at a run five minutes after Becker had taken the call. By dint of some highly illegal speeds, they arrived at their destination – an up-market housing estate on the edge of a wood – no more than 10 minutes after Matt, Danny and the rest of the ARC response teams had reached the site. The anomaly was ten metres into the wood, and Connor was already setting up the locking device.
Matt had glanced at Ethan as he’d followed a pace behind Becker and had done nothing more than nod. Danny’s face had looked suspiciously like a kicked puppy when Ethan had studiously avoided his eyes. Becker made a mental note to bang their heads together in the not too distant future if the pair of them didn’t start talking soon, but that would have to wait until the current threat had been contained.
“What have we got?”
Matt handed him a mobile phone. “A dog-walker shot this an hour ago.”
Becker watched 30 seconds of jerky video feed showing something that looked like a giant version of one of Abby’s pet lizards scuttling away into the bushes. He grimaced. It reminded him of the therocepalians they’d encountered at the school, but was considerably heavier, with a more massive head and strong, crushing jaws set in a broad, blunt snout.
“Have we got an ID yet?”
“Connor thinks it might be something called a Moschorinus. It’s a tough bugger. One of the few things that survived the end Permian extinction.”
“Shoot to kill?” Becker said hopefully, slinging his Mossberg over his shoulder and taking the EMD rifle one of his men handed to him.
“Only as an absolute last resort,” Matt told him. “The EMDs should be enough.”
“I’ve seen those things before,” Ethan commented, ignoring Matt and talking direct to Becker. “They’re fast, they’re nasty, and they hunt in packs. You won’t find one on its own. And your toy guns won’t last long against them. They’d got a hide like iron.”
“Anything else you can tell us?”
“Yes. Stay away from their jaws. The group I travelled with lost four people to a pack of these things and then another three to blood poisoning. One of them got no more than a scratch, but it was enough.”
Matt nodded, and quickly relayed the information to the search teams. The ground had been cleared of walkers, but holding a perimeter around an area the size of the woodland wasn’t going to be easy. Jess had drafted in the local police to keep bystanders at bay, but there will still too many people in close proximity to the woodland for Becker’s liking.
By unspoken agreement, Ethan stayed close to Becker, and Danny went with Matt. The two brothers were giving each other a wide berth like two dogs circling stiff-legged, hackles up, but to his credit, Danny was clearly doing his best not to push things, seemingly content that Ethan – Patrick – hadn’t just disappeared off through the nearest anomaly.
Thanks to Ethan’s sharp eyes and quick reflexes, Becker was able to bring of one the creatures down in the first five minutes of the search. The beast came at them out of the undergrowth, growling like a bear. A blast of Becker’s EMD took it squarely in the chest. For a moment he thought the charge hadn’t been high enough, but then it had crumpled to the ground and lain there, twitching. Abby’s animal-handling crew moved in quickly with nets and ropes, and she pumped it full of enough tranquillisers to stop a charging hippopotamus.
One down, an indeterminate number left to go.
Dong their best to hold to a grid search pattern, the teams swept through the woods, heading towards a small lake roughly in the centre. It was a hot day and according to Ethan, the creatures were likely to be attracted to water. The second one they encountered was quickly taken down by Matt’s team, although as Ethan had predicted, the EMDs were starting to show signs of strain. The still-twitching creatures were providing plenty of work for Abby, and another two had been sighted moving further into the woodland. Becker’s only consolation was that they were too big to be easily overlooked. Providing they kept looking, they should get the buggers in the end.
By the time the lake came into view, Becker was sweating freely and cursing the number of biting insects in the air.
“Sweet blood, princess,” Ethan muttered, looking amused.
“Fuck off.” As the words left Becker’s mouth, Ethan lunged at him, knocking him sideways, just as one of the giant therocephalians came out of a dense patch of undergrowth, moving fast, head down and jaws agape. Its mouth snapped shut, narrowly missing Becker’s leg. He rolled, bringing up his EMD to fire, but the creature had moved off, skirting the edge of the water, heading in the direction of Matt’s group. Ethan’s quick reactions had very probably saved Becker’s life, but there would be time for thanks later.
“Matt! Danny! There’s one coming your way!” he yelled into his radio.
A yell from the other side of the lake told Becker the other group had trouble of their own. He scrambled to his feet and set off at a run, closely followed by Ethan and the other members of his search team. As he ran, Becker pulled his smaller EMD from its holster on his thigh and tossed it to Ethan. Going up against these things armed was bad enough, but unarmed was just fucking stupid. Ethan had just stopped one of the bastard things sinking its teeth in him. The least he could do was to give him the ability to defend himself.
Around them, the undergrowth suddenly exploded in a grey-green mass of heavy-bodied predators. Ethan was right, they’d been attracted to the water. Becker raised the EMD to his shoulder and pulled the trigger. The electro muscular disruptor did its work on one of their attackers but the strength of charge need to take the heavily-set creatures down was draining the battery pack with frightening rapidity. In the close-quarter fighting that followed, time slowed to a crawl, as it so often did in action.
Becker saw one of the Moschorinus grab one of his men by the leg and start to drag him towards the water but he had problems of his own, as did nearly everyone else, while what seemed like an entire pack of the bastard things erupted from the undergrowth around the lake. He managed to bring one down, but his EMD was already starting to run dangerously low on charge. He might manage one more decent shot at a push, but after that the Mossberg would have to come out to play. A shotgun blast close at hand told him he wasn’t the only one in the same predicament.
One of Matt’s team was down, how badly hurt Becker couldn’t tell, but it didn’t look good. Danny ran to the man’s aid, swinging his EMD like a club, clearly out of charge. The Moschorinus turned on him with a roar, jaws agape as another closed on him from behind. Becker used up his final charge on that one as Ethan flung himself forwards, jamming the muzzle of the EMD pistol against the hide of the other creature’s neck. It jerked but didn’t fall. With a curse in a language Becker didn’t recognise, Ethan pulled back the weapon and thrust it into the predator’s mouth, still holding down the trigger.
As Becker dropped his now useless rifle and pumped a shell into the breach of his shotgun, Ethan grabbed a Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife from the sheath on the fallen man’s thigh and buried it to the hilt first in the enraged predator’s eye-socket and then in its neck, buying Danny the time to roll away, out of reach of its jaws as it tottered for a moment and started to crumple to the ground. A blast from Becker’s Mossberg at point blank range put it out of its misery.
As quickly as it had started, the action was over. Two of the creatures were dead, three more insensible. How many of his men were injured, Becker couldn’t yet tell, but at least two were down.
“Jess, we have casualties!” he yelled into his radio mic. “We need a medevac now!”
“There’s a helicopter on its way,” she told him calmly. “ETA five minutes.”
As Becker cast his eyes around the lakeside, wondering if the smell of blood would attract any more of the creatures, he saw Danny come to his knees, breathing hard. He’d been seconds away from a formidable pair of jaws grabbing hold of him when his brother had intervening, no doubt saving his life.
Ethan stared down at his brother, his face utterly inscrutable, the bloody knife still held in his right hand. Without speaking, he held out his other hand. Danny clasped it and allowed Ethan to haul him to his feet. The two brothers hesitated for a moment, and then Danny pulled Ethan into an awkward hug. For a moment, Becker thought Ethan was going to pull away, but he didn’t. He rested his head on Danny’s shoulder, eyes closed as his brother held him.
Becker turned away to allow the two men a brief moment of privacy amongst the carnage. “Keep searching,” he ordered. “We can’t afford to miss one of these buggers.”
By the time his men finished their sweep of the woods, the injured had been stabilised as far as possible and airlifted to hospital. The medics were cautiously optimistic, which was more than Becker had expected after seeing the injuries the predators had inflicted.
Abby’s retrieval teams managed to get the tranquilised Moschorinus back through the anomaly, followed by the corpses. There was going to be plenty of meat available when the others came round, which they were already starting to do just before Connor locked the anomaly again. Ethan worked beside Danny and Becker to help haul the huge beasts back to their own time.
By the time they left the woodland, the brothers had established a tentative rapport. In Becker’s experience, the imminent fear of death was a better way of breaking down barriers than any amount of therapy. Ethan had seen his brother in trouble and had gone to his aid with no thought for his own safety, and in doing so he had done more than just save Danny’s life, he’d started the process of building a new one for himself.
Maybe it was time to start thinking of him as Patrick Quinn, instead of Ethan Dobrowski.
no subject
Date: 2015-04-18 01:48 pm (UTC)